


Of Our Time

by Ezlebe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 10:57:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14235798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “Do you know how many people would think it’s weird you walk around in the day?”Hux grits his teeth in vain against an uncanny sensation, his own words digging and clawing up his throat to leave behind the taste of blood and bitterness thick on his tongue. “I could care less. I was made this way before there were movies – before fucking Stroker. Call me a demon if it makes you feel better.”





	Of Our Time

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, they're probably more like demons? BUT they were also turned and live primarily on blood, so. [Reference to what I imagined they look like between forms, if only shown facially.](https://twitter.com/ezlebe/status/978102530751176704%20)

“Do you know how many people would think it’s weird you walk around in the day?”

Hux grits his teeth in vain against an uncanny sensation, his own words digging and clawing up his throat to leave behind the taste of blood and bitterness thick on his tongue. “I could care less. I was made this way before there were movies – before fucking Stroker. Call me a demon if it makes you feel better.”

The witch looks unduly satisfied with the honesty, turning around to put the vial of despicable potion onto a small shelf just over her sink. She had smartly administered him with the verity tonic before he woke, evidently capturing him by… some means he’s still not certain of, as well as weakening his limbs by other means – most likely using thrice blessed oil, the stink of which is pungent in the air.

Hopefully, the witch will ask next what Hux thinks of his situation; he is absolutely _ecstatic_ to be tied to an iron chair in her bloody kitchen, and he’d really like her to know.

“The answer is always different – sometimes they _can’t_ go out in the day,” the witch says, sitting down in her chair with a narrow look at Hux, straight in the eye. “Why do you think that?”

“Different clans created by different means,” Hux mutters, trying again to shift against the binds, only to find everything down to his fingertips still unwilling to follow orders. It seems he’ll really have to put up with this farce of an interview. “Sometimes I think Snoke created himself, then us in experiment.”

The witch nods, making a visible check at something on her papers. “And Snoke was… Yes, your master – what was he like?”

Hux rolls his eyes to the ceiling, dragging his teeth along his lower lip. “He was _monster_. A storybook creature.”

“Is that how he caught you?” The witch asks, brow furrowing, folding one of the papers over and scribbling in an unreadable shorthand. “Like a storybook – sweets and tricks?”

Hux scoffs low, wishing it had been so simple. “No.”

The witch is silent for a moment, then actually tuts, like he’s the one making her life difficult. “How _did_ he take you, Mr Hux – were you a volunteer?”

“No. Snoke chose his… his _protégés_ when we were just promising children,” Hux says, swallowing thickly and ignoring the settling layer of disgust at the back of his throat, bitter and acrid with once-familiar helplessness. “I came to know him when I was about six, or so. He was just a voice at the time.”

“A voice?” The witch repeats, though she doesn’t look particularly surprised, which is rather a disappointment.

“Only until he was a man, of a sort,” Hux says, lowering his eyes just over the witch’s shoulder, giving a shrug that may as well be directed at the porcelain sink. He barely remembers the before, as short as it was in contrast to the rest of his life. “A noble, of course. My father, he… He had believed he could manipulate his way into their circle.”

The witch hums, her nod just visible at the corner of his vision. “Did he?”

“No,” Hux scoffs, certain enough of that, “But Snoke easily convinced him that I could be a wager, since I was fair-faced and girlish, so when I was fifteen I was sent to…” He pauses, pressing his lips together and suffering an unwelcome flush of memory. “Well, I’m sure my father didn’t care.”

“What does – ? ” The witch goes still for a moment, then gives a short, discomfited frown. “ _Did_ Snoke ever use you that way?”

“No,” Hux says, admittedly thankful for that to this very day, though it hardly makes the rest of it any better. “But keep in mind, witch, there is more than one way to be used.”

The witch glances down at that, quickly flipping a page in her notebook. “And that’s when he turned you?”

“Clearly not,” Hux says dryly, wondering if he should be flattered or offended – she’s not the first to question it, but it’s usually far more mocking. “He turned me when I was… late twenties, I think. Quite old, for the time, but he’d kept me locked up in secret libraries and away from the lesser classes, so I retained the youth most lost by then.”

“Did he create any others?”

Hux winces as the answer clambers across his tongue, almost eager. “Ren.”

“Really, only you two?” The witch says, with a nonsensically unsatisfied hum, leaning forward with narrowed eyes, then abruptly straightening and reaching out to level her recorder. She starts speaking just slightly louder, and forces her already posh accent even more clipped, “The Ren referred here is, to clarify, also known as: Marqués Benvolio Organa; Kylo Ren; Ben; Benvolio, the Bloody; Oscuro Segador; et cetera, and is likely to be referred to with such variety in this interview.”

“Just call him Ren,” Hux sighs, ignoring the irksome flinch that is evidently going to recur with every utter of the blasted syllable. “The beast has gone through so many names I’d be surprised if even _he_ remembered them all.”

The witch gives an oddly commiserating hum, then looks back up with pen again poised, expression intent. “Ren – was he already with Snoke?”

“No,” Hux says, barely managing to keep the impulse to clarify behind clenched teeth; he doesn’t know what concoction she’s gotten her hands on, but it’s disturbingly effective.

“After, then?” The witch says, tilting her head with another frustratingly knowing nod. “How old was he?”

Hux rolls his eyes, tracing his tongue across the back of his teeth. “I would _guess_ mid-twenties.”

“Was he under the same influence of Snoke as you had been?”

“Yes,” Hux says, suffering a flash of memory: Ren, young and so unaware, snarling at him barely a day out of meeting that he should never dare question Leader Snoke. Ren been the second go, and more disturbed for it. “Worse.”

The witch purses her lips, striking at something on her paper. She looks up after another moment, her brows raised like it can hide the discomfort in her eyes. “How old do you think Ren was when Snoke first started to speak to _him_?”

“He once said it was since birth,” Hux says, giving in to the fact that this has somehow become Ren’s story, because of course it has; everything is _always_ about him. “And considering his family… It may have been.”

The witch flinches oddly, repositioning her notebook across her knees and giving a low cough. “Why was his family important?”

Hux tilts his head, feeling something pull painfully in his shoulder as he tries to gesture with little more than disdain. If he can’t use his strength, she really had little reason tie him down so soundly. “The lot of them were exorcists and soothsayers, probably the first vampire hunters after a time,” he says, grimacing at memories that actually have little to do with Ren, or at least as little as they can, “Not like your Buffy, more like… Van Helsing. They were quite famous for a century or two, and stupidly well respected in the aristocracy – his mother was actually a Spanish princess through adoption after her Skywalker father was… felled.”

She had also helped kill him for good later, but Hux hasn’t been asked that question. He already has enough trouble with that family without spilling their secrets. 

“Ren was as well, then,” the witch says, finally losing that edge of knowing to a comforting befuddlement. She taps the edge of the paper with her pen. “I thought… A _prince_? The records only refer to him as a marquis.”

“I haven't the slightest how aristocracy works,” Hux mutters, bitterly honest, looking back to the sink and ignoring that ache of ignorance behind his sternum.

The witch exhales something under her breath, pen pausing with a short glance up. “Did you get along when you met?”

“Good Lord, no,” Hux says, hearing his voice deepen and looking back to her in disbelief.

“And yet you remain an infamous pair.”

“I believe that’s historical romanticism,” Hux says, ignoring the little voice of discrepancy. It had never been great, but most of their time _really_ together had been agreeable, some of it even a little winsome in that short, liminal space between their learning to truly trust each other and then doing what they had to. “We fought most of the time when we met, when we were working for Snoke, when we decided to kill Snoke, after we killed Snoke…”

The witch hums, a twist turning at the corner of her mouth. “So he was... A convenient accomplice?”

“No,” Hux says, swallowing shallowly and finally managing a second time to hold his tongue. Good. He’s getting it under control.

“Alright,” the witch says slow, reaching up and scratching slightly at her temple with the pen, then looking down at with a grimace. She sighs, glancing slightly over to the recorder, then back to Hux. “How did you decide to kill Snoke?”

“We found out he was doing the same thing he’d done with us to someone new,” Hux says, sneer twisting at his mouth as he angrily spills centuries-long secrets like marbles; he's realizing belatedly it might have to do with his temper. He looks down at the floor, listening to his voice echoing the room with little of his own will, except perhaps his bitterly mocked propensity for speech. “It was probably sixty years after he turned Ren; we found out he was whispering in the ear of a Lord’s daughter. A big girl. Blonde, strong. I do shudder to think what he was planning with her. Or one of us.”

The witch frowns as a telltale buzz breaks the mood, then swipes at something unseen. “Was it difficult?”

“What? Killing him?” Hux tips his head, trying to calm himself and thinking for a moment he’ll be able not to answer at all, only to make the mistake of truly contemplating the question and consequently spurring the compulsion. The memory itself is stark with apprehension to the lead up, then going foggy in the aftermath after it had proven unworthy of further contemplation. He feels a huff at the back of his throat, still resentful. “No. I weakened him with hawthorn root and Ren beheaded him. We both burned him.”

The witch nods shortly, still messing about with something on her phone. “And after that, is that when you two started to travel?”

“We never traveled together,” Hux says, determinedly making his tone dismissive rather than plaintive. It’s been literal centuries – he shouldn’t still care that he’d never been offered so much as a damned invitation. He had been fine by himself, history proving those hurts as little more than rejected sentiment. “No, after that… I laid low in London for a few decades, while Ren decided to try his hand in the Americas. He seemed to enjoy it tremendously.”

“But,” the witch protests, sending a narrow look upward and clearly skeptical for some strange reason. “That doesn’t… You _definitely_ traveled, and often.”

“And it is clearly the reason I am here,” Hux says, giving up his control completely in preference for snide reflex. “Numerous badly-covered tracks. But we never did so together.”

“I – uh,” the witch looks down at her papers, pulling at the corner to display their considerable number underneath her present notes. “I have a lot of stories and – and bodies that are theorized to be connected to you. And him.”

“Yes, it is something I admit to not thinking about in the moment,” Hux says, feeling a long-suffering ache at the back of his throat, down into his gut. He grimaces in disgust, swallowing it back and refusing to think about it any longer, in this place without alcohol or pleasant narcotics. “ _Moments,_ you’ll gather _._ It was shockingly easy to get away with murder until recently.”

The witch grimaces with something that seems to be agreement, eyes glancing across the room to a conspicuous stack of additional notebooks. He can only assume those are from other efforts at biographies; he can’t think of who, though, as no one in particular has disappeared from the area. Except for Ventress, but she’s only gone to Southeast.

A clatter at the door interrupts the musing with a creak and a thunk, flooding the room in soft, summer twilight with the pull of a blackout curtain. “Hey, Rey,” a voice greets, quickly followed by a familiar figure shouldering further open from the arctic entry. “I was wondering if – ”

“Finnemore!?” Hux gasps, recognizing him in an instant, both stunned and furious. He doesn’t know what he did to earn this sort of targeted ire from a fellow sanguisuge, particularly one he’s socialized with on rare occasion; to be judged and sentenced to kidnap and _interrogation_.

“Shit,” Finn yelps, eyes flashing bright white with surprise. He steps backward onto the jamb, forcing it taut against the thin frame with a worrying creak.

“Are you helping witches?” Hux sneers, leaning forward as much as he can, hands clutching into fists at the bottom of the chair; he feels a heady need to rip out a heart. “ _Hunters_?! You bloody traitor.”

“I’ll um, be back,” Finn says, ignoring Hux and staring determinedly at the witch, evidently known as _Rey_. He points backward with one hand, using the other to open the door with a loud, hasty push. “Call me if you need help; I’ll just be – not here.”

“Get back here!” Hux shouts, renewing his struggle against the bonds, trying to force his blood up and himself into a more frightening creature, only to remain depressingly human. The blessed oil must’ve had some kind of enhanced relaxer, for all the good it’s done for his _mind_ – it feels like the inside of his skull is inundated with wasps. “Finnemore!”

“I’m not here,” Finn repeats, his voice fading quick as he descends creaky steps.

Hux exhales hard, glaring at the door and going through options between outright death and simple tattling, then realizes with an unsettling lurch he won’t even have a chance for anything after today. He reconciles himself with being intensely smug that Dameron and Finn, who’ve been a pair of disgustingly happy mates for decades, are in the process of having their bliss cracked at the seams by a hunter witch. He’s always hoped they might choke on their complacency, though he hadn’t quite envisioned being a consequence of it. 

He flinches a moment later at his own thoughts, sorrow striking belatedly under his ribs; mates are for swans, not monsters. Finn and Dameron are simply a particularly long-lived pair.

“How often would you meet, then. With Be- _Ren_?” Rey asks, taking a conspicuously shallow breath and straightening up in her chair. Her voice has returned to a clipped, public school prim, as she clearly tries to mask her loss of face behind desperate professionalism. “And when?”

Hux is quiet for a few minutes, trying to physically bite back his response, nearly feeling successful, until that delightful sting cuts up his throat and forces his mouth open. “Every few months,” he croaks, glaring down at the dingy floor; it doesn’t look like it’s been so much as swept since May. He should mention that just before she kills him – ask if it will ruin the charming mudstains. “Hence your news clippings.”

“Until Pittsburg,” Rey says, unceremoniously dropping every act of ignorance like a guillotine.

“We had stopped _killing_ far earlier than that,” Hux snaps, sending an admonishing glance up and desperately wondering from who she’s got that information. He doesn’t know anyone who’s connected that city with him, aside for the obvious, but he’s… No. _No_ , Hux saw him three days ago; she couldn’t have gotten to him. “It was all clubs after the war – you know them, full of stupid humans who want to get bitten.

“We’d take one of them, Ren would convince them we fucked them, and they’d be on their way,” he says, forcing his tone into something apathetic, though he’s certain that she can see the true sentiment across his face. He takes a breath, realizing he’s paused for a few seconds too long. “Pittsburg was simply the _last_ time we did that.”

“Because he killed that family,” Rey says, her tone dropping now into barely contained repulsion. 

“No,” Hux denies, forgetting for an instant that he can’t lean forward in his seat, pulling at his shoulders in reflexive attempt to intimidate. The event has been thrown at him countless times by other thoughtless morons, as if Hux could have cared that Ren killed a couple of useless humans. “They were _hunters_ , mind you, dragging their own child into the den of a predator. And I don’t believe for a second he meant to do any of it at all – he’s reckless, but not actually stupid. Ren just has this…”

“What? He has _what_?” Rey prompts forcefully, her eyes dark and boring, and he’s struck suddenly with the impression that it’s not only been the tonic loosening his tongue.

“He has a problem,” Hux says, closing his eyes for a moment and tilting his head to the side until he feels, and hears, a few vertebra crack. He’s always hated having to defend Ren’s various unflattering traits; especially now, when he’d rather only think of him as he is, rather than who he was. “They used to call it berserking. He could get set off and he would rip into everyone – most everyone. I had been under the impression it stopped after Snoke died.”

“You think he went _berserk_?” Rey says, a particular disbelief coloring her tone; one used by plenty of others with less curiosity.

“I don’t know,” Hux mutters, a little startled by his own apparent truth. He’s maintained for years that of course it was simply Ren losing control, he knows what’s accepted and what isn’t, but, “His anger tended to be more… self-directed. I can’t think of what could have done it.”

Rey tips her head, exhaling a peculiarly shaky breath, and falling silent for a few moments while penning surely fascinating notes. “But you _are_ confirming you were in Pittsburg.”

Hux rolls his eyes, “Yes.”

“What did he say to you about it after?” Rey asks, clearly making some sort of line under the last few words – wait, a transition? Hells. “The next time you spoke.”

“We haven’t,” Hux says, glaring at the notes now and trying to concentrate his anger on his life being turned into a _book_ , rather than the usual regret for his state of being the last twenty years. He exhales heavily and glances up to catch her confusion. “Spoken. That is.”

Rey purses her lips, skepticism returning in most irritating fashion. “Not at all?”

“No,” Hux says flatly, feeling his jaw practically turn to stone with latent humiliation. The only good thing about having to confess this all is he won’t be around to hear the mocking get back to him when it inevitably reaches his few acquaintances. “I did believe he was dead for almost a decade, but I assume you’re not including that particular misconception.” 

“Oh,” Rey says, her brows going up, looking down and crossing something out with a conspicuous haste. She scribbles over it before looking back up, clearing her throat. “Uh, then… What did you do when you found out he _was_ alive?”

Hux shrugs tightly, exhaling a breath that he knows sounds like a sigh. “Nothing, as said.”

It still aches as much as anything, despite all attempts to move past it. He’s gone over the last time he spoke to Ren a thousand times, trying to parse out what finally set him going the other way – he can’t pinpoint a thing. It had been no more remarkable than any other visit.

He had actually expected Ren to seek him out for help afterward, but it had only been silence, leading to an ill-advised, years-long belief in a rumor that had been perpetuated by his own lack of contact and gossipy twats. He doesn’t quite know how he feels now, only knows the anger after finding out he was wrong has faded pale against the sting of inadequacy. Ren had never been particularly interested in keeping company after Snoke, anyway, but… he had his moments, even if they evidently meant nothing.

“So.” Rey goes quiet for a few moments, tapping her pen against the spiral of the notebook with a grating series of metallic tinks. “I’m going to have to re-administer the tonic if you’re able to ignore it.”

“I’m not,” Hux says, sneering with a short lift of his chin, as even thinking to directly lie still drives him to speak like it’s reflex; admittedly, he _can_ finally feel the spell weakening, but not enough to allow him any freedom. “I’ve said nothing to him since 1996.”

“Half-truths, then,” Rey says, shifting forward in her seat and turning her phone in hand, drawing attention down to a damning image onscreen. The photo on display is somehow blurred to the point of absurdity, but undeniably of him on sunny day in a crowd of moronic tourists. “I only found you because you bought one of his pieces – Look,” she flips the picture sideways, swiping to another image that is more focused, showing him reaching out of frame. “You’re right next to his booth.”

Hux rolls his eyes, knowing exactly what piece she saw him buy. It’s a wolf and a raven, fit together into a circle, and he’d felt an immediate need to have it in his office. He’d walked past the booth countless times, sometimes more than once a weekend, but that had been the first time he’d stepped inside; Ren had taken leave and left a neighbor in charge.

“Why haven’t you spoken to him?”

“I can’t,” Hux says, feeling an awful burn develop at the back of his neck; he’d meant to say he didn’t _want_ to, but that clearly didn’t pass the filter.

The entire situation is hardly of his own choosing, but he’ll acknowledge his part in the matter; he’s had numerous chances to walk up, to say something, even cause a scene, but instead he remains a coward. He had always assumed they _would_ end in a fight, and that he’d have some illusion of choice in the matter, a way to defend himself, but it had turned out Ren respected him little more than anyone else. He wasn’t even given a damned goodbye, which is something he’d not realized he even wanted until it didn’t happen.

Rey seems almost pitying now, her tone more insulting, “How long have you been in the same place as him?”

“I haven’t been,” Hux says, scoffing under his breath and glancing toward the blacked-out window; they must still be in the city, which is comforting. “He lives in _Willow_ , which is basically the middle of nowhere.”

Rey narrows her eyes, more exasperated now as she lifts her notebook. “Do you know I plan to include his part in the story?”

“I assumed,” Hux says, swiping his tongue hard against the inside of his teeth, then tipping his head with a half-hearted glare down to the floor. “If it makes you feel safer, I’m sure he won’t care a bit that you’ve staked me. May even thank you.”

“I’m not going to stake you,” Rey says, loudly letting her notes fall with a barely-whispered mutter, “As if that would even kill you. And I’ve already interviewed him.”

Hux looks up with a start, disbelief coursing through him. “You’re going to let me go?” he clarifies, mouth twisting and trying to force his fangs out, managing a few millimeters with a comforting a sting against his gums. “What if I decide to eat you, which I’m  – ”

“My last question,” Rey interrupts, evidently careless of the threat – she must have some very strong spells packed into this rat-trap. Or she’s lying as some attempt to lower his guard. “Did you ever love him?”

Hux feels his expression fall, teeth cutting into his tongue as he tries to silence the words leaping up his throat. His mouth tastes of rust when he finally speaks, but his answer proves satisfyingly avoidant through his returning willpower. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Did you love him?” Rey repeats, voice going low as the intensity from before returns to her eyes, staring deep into him and practically compelling a response.

“Yes,” Hux growls, swallowing rapidly and twisting his wrists against the chair. She’s better at that than he is, which is absolutely intolerable in a mortal.

“As family or as a – “

“Yes, as a lover,” Hux spits, dragging his teeth hard along his lower lip. He exhales a scoff, reopening his mouth to cut off the next question. “Yes, I still do.”

“Then why haven’t you just talked to him?” Rey asks, her tone pitching somewhere near mocking, as if she has the right.

“Because he doesn't – haven’t you been listening?” Hux snarls, feeling some contrary relief at finally being able to talk around his truths rather than blurt them out. She doesn’t need to know he’d kept a lid on his discontent far before Ren ever left him; that this was just the natural progression of never saying a damned thing. His cowardice doesn’t belong in a fucking book. “And good riddance. Who needs an artist, anyway? May as well be Benvolio the Bloody _Useless_.”

“That’s very rude,” Rey mutters, glancing down to her papers like a note that he’s unkind is going to affect a lifetime of behavior. She looks to her phone again, humming with dissatisfaction. “And a lie. But the interview is over, so I’ll leave it.”

“How magnanimous,” Hux says, huffing at the back of his throat, only to flinch as a peculiar discomfort glances almost painfully across his mind. He finds himself grimacing, eyes screwing shut in surprise, and reopens them slowly only to see Rey staring back with narrow curiosity; not her, then, which sparks worry.

He hopes random, intrusive feelings aren’t some long term side-effect of the tonic; although, it’s almost… It can’t be, but it has to – it’s the only thing that makes real sense. It felt exactly the same. “He’s here.”

Rey raises an eyebrow, turning in her chair and glancing toward the door. “Who?”

“Ren,” Hux says, feeling a skitter of panicked agitation up the back of his spine. He doesn’t understand how – No, it’s a coincidence. Maybe. No, it is. It _has_ to be – if she’s already got ahold of Ren with underhanded tricks and interrogated him like this, he must be coming back after setting some violent, unreasonable ultimatum. Ren loves ultimatums, even if he hardly sticks to them himself.

“He can’t be, I have – ” a heavy thunk breaks apart Rey’s defense, porch creaking with a far heavier steps than Finnemore, and her expression drops with her voice. “I have _wards_. They’ve worked on the rest of you.”

Hux spares her a weak sneer, feeling ill-timed amusement that she thinks to control a ghastly creature like Ren with magic. He swallows hard against a jump at the back of his throat when another jab of foreign, grudging familiar anger flickers through his mind, soon followed by a metallic crack resounding from a breaking lock.

Ren appears in the doorway like a looming shadow, though a step into the light reveals him simply puffed up like an angry cat as he shoves further through the narrow entry, door smacking the wall and causing an avalanche of coats from a hook. He’s also oblivious as ever, singled-minded in his bid for apparent revenge, as he stalks forward with his eyes fixed on Rey. “ _Witch_!”

“Really, you bastard?!” Rey snaps, straightening in her chair with a snarl across her mouth. The bravery is senseless, but she does a well-enough job hiding her fear behind wide, infuriated eyes. “Are you blind?”

Ren’s brow furrows and his amber-lit eyes flick over to catch Hux, where his expression summarily plummets into outright horror. He takes a step back, then another, crowding against the wall and reaching out to steady himself with the visible curl of claws. “ _Hux_?”

“Organa,” Hux responds tightly, because it’s the only thing he can think to say that won’t become some awful truth. The worst part is Ren actually looks good, despite the circumstances, even dressed in faded jeans with visible holes, sporting an Alaskan Brewing hoodie that’s seen far better days; the way he seems to be turning grey is far less attractive.

“Fuck,” Ren swears, lurching back out through the door jamb. He lingers there a few moments, breath getting loud and gasping, then disappears as quick as he came, though his hasty exit is punctuated by a loud clatter and a worrying shake of the house, uncannily like an earthquake.

Rey stumbles up from her chair, wide-eyed expression fading as she rushes over to the open door. She stays there for a few moments, shoulders falling, looking back to Hux, aghast, “He just… He _broke_ my porch.”

Hux tilts his head, opening his mouth only to find himself mute for the first time all night. He exhales and looks to the floor, biting down hard on his lips, and tries to pull away from the thudding, heart-wrenching epiphany that Ren just… He really left Hux defenseless to a fucking hunter. He truly doesn’t care. 

He startles as the binds across his arms unexpectedly loosen, elbows turning to a more natural angle in the wake. It does little to reignite that murderous urge from earlier, feeling less inclined to tear her throat out with other thoughts still churning to the point of nausea.

“Oh, now I get to go?” Hux asks after a few tense seconds, trying to force his tone mocking, but it sounds like a creak even to his own ears. He swallows unsteadily, lifting his hands to his lap and twisting them together, cracking the joints at his wrists with a pair of nervous movements.

A glass appears in front of Hux’s face, and he blinks down at it in disbelief, absently taking it to cradle uneasily in his hand. He stares through the water, to the muddle of tiled floor underneath, and wonders how long he’ll have to wait for any of this to feel real.

“He was quite hard to interview,” Rey says, picking her notes up and taking them to the shelf, stacking them among the rest, then kneeling down to tidy with careless sort of ease, as if that was just another ill-timed visit by a friend. She gives an odd huff, “If it wasn’t yes or no, it was vague… Poetic? No explanation. You’re far more talkative.”

“Ha,” Hux mutters, taking a hesitant sip of water, then looking down to it with a start. He can’t taste anything untoward, not even the bitter residue left in his mouth earlier, but she could have different varieties.

“You two are the only mates I’ve interviewed that – ”

“Mates aren’t real,” Hux interrupts without quite meaning to, feeling his chest tighten to the point of wheezing. He squeezes his hand around the water, gritting his teeth as he speaks, “That’s fairytale. Stories for humans to think monsters can be romantic.”

“– Who aren’t still together,” Rey finishes, mouth slanting with likely irritation at the sentiment. If every notebook is a pair, there are certainly many other delusional morons that might agree with her. “Because most of them die after a few years apart. But you two … You’ve kind of always been apart, haven’t you?”

Hux shakes his head, trying to dismiss rising memories of stolen moments tucked inside decades under a tyranny that had made them simultaneously inseparable and in opposition. The indulgence had somehow ceased rather than progressed after said tyrant died; an unforeseen consequence of newborn autonomy. It had been the last thing he expected, but Ren will always be unpredictable.

It’s actually what makes him take another drink, hiding his eyes as he glances sideways to track a suspiciously ambulatory shadow. His suspicions prove accurate as it seems to peel off the wall like smoke, reach for him, before abruptly snapping back and disappearing against the dusky paint. He exhales a shaky breath, leaning over to set the glass on the floor; he’s not sure where this is going, or if Ren is simply eavesdropping, but it’s better not to have glass in hand.

“Hydrating will dilute the tonic,” Rey says, drawing back his attention with a short tut.

“I can’t stand to be here longer,” Hux mutters, hesitantly reaching around the back of the chair to use as leverage, feeling an appalling shake down to his fingertips as he wraps his palm around the edge. It’s not a lie, but he probably would have lingered a few minutes longer to gather his strength in other circumstances.

“You’re just leaving?” Rey says, surprise clear in the raise of her brows. She probably expected more attempt for revenge, or any, but Ren has done a well-enough job failing at that today.

Hux rolls his eyes, rising from the chair and relieved only to stumble a little, walking slow over to the door on colt’s legs. He passes through the still-open doorway, but finds a troubling obstacle on the other side of the entry – he’s not sure the oil has worn off enough to allow his jumping a length to the ground.

He takes a sharp breath as a familiar black fog passes by his feet to coalesce between the slats of rain-rotted wood, a familiar figure forming until doleful eyes stare up at him. He’s tempted to turn around and go back in the apartment, but there’s a sick little part of him that wants nothing more than to keep those eyes on him for as long as possible – the rest of him can’t stand the sight of the bastard.

Ren’s presence now doesn’t erase that he _left_. He’s _always_ left. But… he also looks a little bit like he’s about to cry, in that usual way that cuts to the quick.

Hux grudgingly takes the offer when a pair of hands reach out, ignoring a foolish burn at the back of his ears. He manages to push away from Ren the moment his feet hit the ground, rather than lingering on the wide shoulders that shift momentarily under his hands. It hurts a little to do it, a sharp pain sliding down his throat and into his gut, but he still turns around to proceed down the sidewalk.

The fact Ren says nothing nor moves to follow gives credence to the decision, even if it splits the pain into a fissure.

The neighborhood is thankfully familiar after he finds a larger road; low income, family-minded, and nowhere near enough to downtown. He still has a phone, and his wallet is heavy in his pocket, so he could call a cab, but instead he just keeps walking; he can better clear the blessed oil and tonic with blood flow.

She must have bribed someone – or used that thrall-like voice – at the office. He’d been working, hadn’t he? Trying to get that call-center investment off the ground. It feels like _days_ ago. He thinks he had a meeting scheduled for the evening, and realizes she might have been it.

He pauses with a look up and down the street, knowing there’s a bus in the city, but never having –

A bar. Is just across the road. He stares at it, seeing paint peeling and an awning falling to pieces, lot full of muddy potholes and a couple of trucks. It’s as if this dive has descended from on high just for him at this terrible crossroads of circumstance.

It’s near empty despite the late hour, inside darker than the mid-summer sky outside, making it absolutely perfect for getting pissed and pretending he’s anywhere else. The bartender doesn’t even bother to wave a greeting, nor ask for ID, but the lack of customer service isn’t going to stop Hux slipping down into a stool and slumping over the bar, pressing the palm of one hand to his brow.

“Whiskey,” Hux says, tracing his eyes down the thin, broken veneer of the kitschy burl wood bowl to his side. It’s empty, of course, a few unappetizing crumbs at the bottom – it almost makes him glad to have no appetite for solid food.

A glass is set down with little more question, and he wraps his hand around only to find it chilled to the touch from ice. He stares at it for a long moment, then sighs, lifting it to take a swig – it’s not quite as terrible as it could be, so there is that, even if it’s of mysterious origins and slowly being diluted. He already needs drink an entire bottle to feel anything, why not stretch that into two? This place certainly needs the money.

He’s less surprised than he should be when a shadow blankets over his shoulder, though he is a little that Ren actually walked calmly in like a civilized being. He must have tired himself out for the night.

“What are you doing here?” Ren says low, as if he shouldn’t be asking himself that question; over twenty years avoiding Hux, but suddenly now he won’t even do the service of fucking right off.

“I feel like a drink,” Hux mutters, lifting the watered-down whiskey and staring through the glass to the other side of the bar, then downing the rest in one go; a cagey glance from the bartender is enough to know they’ve figured out their _sort_. Hux realizes his eyes must be glowing from fury. “Obviously.”

“Here,” Ren repeats, leaning closer, beating at the wooden counter with a heavy hand. “ _Alaska_.”

“We all end up here,” Hux says, forcing a shrug and slamming his glass down a hairsbreadth from Ren’s thumb, enjoying the resulting flinch. “Or Norway.”

“That’s not a fucking answer, you don’t – wait, what is this?” Ren demands, though the anger in his voice quickly fades to perplexity. The warm pad of his finger is a shock on Hux’s hand, tracing over a band that Hux had mostly forgotten about, for all he puts it on almost every morning. “Where did you get that?”

Hux bites hard at his lip to keep himself from speaking, letting go of the glass and careful not to actually look Ren in the face, or at the ring, feeling disgusting palpitations of sentiment deep in his chest. The bartender gestures carefully from down the bar, brandishing a bottle, and Hux sighs as he signals for more, relaxing his mouth to let the truth spill out. “I got it at a tourist shop downtown. As you well know.”

Ren slowly pulls away from the onyx and silver ring, octal-shaped and vaguely Baroque.  “What… do you like about it – the pattern?”

“I saw you drop it off,” Hux confesses, choosing to thank the tonic-induced sincerity for loosening coils of envy that have only grown tighter and tighter over the past decade. He had been witness to Ren putting on practiced charm before, but nothing so pointless as to endear storefronts to peddle his jewelry and paintings and sculptures – profitable results of various skills that he’s managed to master over hundreds of years. “The clerk had joked that you made it for her, and you… You didn't disagree. So I bought it.”

“So,” Ren mutters, eyes still downcast as he leans onto the bar with an elbow, mouth twisting, “You _don’t_ like it.”

“Oh, get fucked,” Hux snaps, feeling a conspicuous strain under his palm as he retakes hold of the whiskey, glass close to splintering and the damned ring causing a short squeak against the side. “Do you want me to take it off, throw it out for some raven to use as nesting sparkle? If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t bloody wear it.”

Ren is silent for a few blessed moments, then, “You’re still affected by the potion.”

“Aren’t you an observant minx,” Hux says, swirling the whiskey and watching the honeyed shift of liquid, up and around the dingy glass. He wishes he had the power to tell Ren to leave, but more of him dreads it. The places they touched earlier are still tingling – his fingertips, his chest, all the way up his sides. “It’s barely been two hours.”

Ren tilts his head, nodding forward with a pointed disapproval. “You probably shouldn’t drink alcohol.”

Hux scoffs under his breath, glancing up only to find himself instead glaring at the bartender, who’s actually paused the fruitless wipe of their counter to look over like this might be some kind of admonishment. It’s good to know Ren still inspires instinctual fear in lower beings, even looking like hoodied Valley trash.

Ren sighs and leans in closer, voice lowering, “Hux, tell me, how _long_?”

“Twelve years,” Hux snaps, bitterly showing the weakness of his hand.

Ren does go satisfyingly still, ostensibly finding the space in his small mind to ponder for minutes. His voice even cracks on his next words, like he actually cares. “Long time.”

Hux tips his head to peer from the corner of his eye, watching with some disbelief as Ren leans hard into the bar, expression plainly distraught, and realizes he’s somehow taken the advantage. “Yes.”

“Did you know I was here?” Ren asks, shoulders slowly hunching up around his ears.

“I did,” Hux says, unexpectedly feeling freed by the honesty, vindictive as every word deepens the grimace across Ren’s ever-expressive face. If this had happened some other impossible way, perhaps he’d be more eager to endear himself rather than exercise malice, but he’s recently re-discovered his fury over the situation.

Ren exhales hard and looks away, worrying at his lower lip as he turns the bar to his back. He raises his hand again only to drop it, smacking the counter again, but it’s softer than before, done with less resolve. It’s a look that Hux can’t recognize ever seeing on him – somewhere between fury and uncertainty, and not entirely unreadable, but very near. 

“You really had no idea I was?” Hux asks, reluctantly curious now; he’d tried his best to stay out of Ren’s direct perception, but he hadn’t done much to hide himself – he still went to clubs, kept himself in the community. He knows that Ren never did, but a few individuals definitely knew they were both up here, likely including that twat Dameron and his witch-loving _friend_.

Ren glances over quick, eyes scantly catching Hux’s, then gives a short, stilted shake of his head.

“Really?” Hux says, inadvertently recalling a dim promise, whispered in his ear when options favored better for running than killing. “Whatever happened to finding me no matter where I went?”

“It’s not like you ever returned the sentiment,” Ren snarls, pushing off from the bar, shifting like he has a mind to get in Hux’s face, hands clenching at his sides. “I was the only one who tried, always chasing you down like some kind of – ”

“I never told you to leave to begin with!”

Ren’s eyes go wide, bearing back into the bar with a noticeable choke.

Hux takes a shaky breath and reaches up to clumsily wipe his mouth, trying to shove the words back inside, but it’s useless. He can’t cover that up, make it something cruel, when it’s clearly just desperate. “You don’t get to stand there and act indignant when you’re the selfish ass who finds me so _boring_ that all you can tolerate is a few days,” he continues, tightening his other hand into a fist under the counter, long-forgotten manners insisting he keep his anger hidden from observant eyes, even as he hopes it’s evident. “Always eager to get away and back to – to seemingly endless adventure. Never inviting me along.”

“Hux, I – ”

“Not to mention, when you finally do settle down, you just… just _disappear_ ,” Hux says, furiously pushing from the bar and standing, gratified to find himself taller with Ren slumped in deserved indignity. “I’ll admit to first assuming you’d simply found someone you actually…” he swallows, then shakes his head and forcefully catches Ren’s eyes, finding them wide and dark, “But no, you just couldn’t be _bothered_ with me anymore.”

Ren splutters out a startled disagreement, but it’s reflexive – meaninglessness.

“Granted, the sincerity of that didn’t really sink in until just under an hour ago,” Hux continues, pulling bills from his wallet to throw at the awkwardly hovering bartender. He had wanted to drink until closing, but the Great Twat of Valencia has handily foiled that plan. “Watching you turn and walk away after you found me drugged and tied to a chair with a hunter.”

“I came back!” Ren insists, staying shoved in close as he follows Hux, insisting on continuing this embarrassing scene as they exit the mostly empty bar. “And she didn’t – she didn’t kill _me_.”

Hux gives a bitter laugh, hearing it ring loud into the quiet, empty night as he opens the door onto the decaying deck. “Oh, what a grand excuse.”

Ren shifts forward once they reach the middle of the parking lot, but Hux moves reflexively, turning to grab Ren’s wrist as his arm swings up, then throwing it back with perhaps too much force. It seems the years haven’t taken completely what bound them, though that was clear enough by his perception of Ren’s anger – he wonders if Ren even realizes it.

Ren exhales a growling sigh, hand now twitching at his side. “No one else exists that I could stand eternity with aside for you, but you – You would do nothing but criticize me when we were together for longer than a few days.”

“Do not try to blame _me_ for your lack of commitment,” Hux hisses, feeling his ears start to burn – he cannot believe this conversation. He has an urge to turn and walk back to the bar, retake his glass, if just to splinter it to shards against Ren’s temple. It would do literally nothing aside for make him feel better, but that’s reason enough.

Ren takes a short breath, lips pinching and rolling between his teeth in thought. “I thought – I _realized_ short term was the only way you would entertain me.”

Hux shakes his head at both the sullen tone and the senseless words, fury and sorrow simmering together under his skin. He can feel the whiskey churning in his otherwise empty stomach, and doesn't dare to look back, refusing to even entertain the idea it might be guilt.

“I dreaded to have you remember your opinion on me,” Ren continues, working up into an impressive verse; a melodramatic habit that the modern world somehow hasn’t shamed out of him. He reaches out, broad hand hovering just centimeters from Hux’s shoulder, “To suffer the return of your hate and exasperation; to covet memory of your touch even as we stood next to each other.”

“You’re nothing but a thin-skinned, thoughtless fool,” Hux snarls, biting hard with sharp teeth at the inside of his lip. He will not be drawn into this self-pitying nonsense, and steps forward, into Ren’s hand, shoving his own pointed finger into a wide chest with force enough to cause a wince. “I am fully capable of feeling more than one emotion at a time.”

“It hardly means anything if one of them is always loathing,” Ren protests, his gaze both frustrated and dewy, a thin veneer of red traceable at the waterline.

“I haven’t hated you in centuries!” Hux feels himself losing control, actually losing it in a way he couldn’t with the witch, and his gums rip open with a sharp twinge as he lets loose a furious hiss, words slurring some when spiny teeth get in the way. “You arrogant wretch, martyring yourself like some tragic figure. You were the one who always left; you were the one who took to the sea; you were the one without the decency to give some bloody notice when you dumped me after three hundred years!”

He’s backed Ren up against a parked truck, flexing his hands as anger fuels unearthly strength, and only the sparest thread of self-control keeps him from bodily throwing the entire thing over onto Ren. He can see the reflection of his own glowing irises in Ren’s wide eyes, and forces himself to look away with a low exhale. He doesn’t need to see himself so lost.

“I - I… _Hux_ ,” Ren stutters out, abruptly falling to his knees in the muddy lot, late-night sun just bright enough to cast him pale and almost ethereally penitent. He bows his head, “I am at mercy for your harshest sentencing, for no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Hux says, feeling the forgotten sensation of a flush the back of his neck, his rage fading in the wake of it like doused flame. He reaches down to take Ren’s loose shirtfront in hand, tugging hard to pull him back to his feet. “Badly quoting Classics at me has never worked.”

Ren nudges in close as he stands, demure despite his size, but every move so telegraphed that Hux already knows his own answer before hearing the thoughtless question. “Can you forgive me?”

“I’m too old not to,” Hux sighs, though that is so much an excuse that it’s almost an outright lie. The hands against his sides are too distracting, pressing so familiarly against his lower ribs that he has to ignore a swell of gratification.

“You’re immortal,” Ren murmurs, digging his nose under Hux’s jaw and against his jugular, audibly inhaling, “My only and truest death.”

Hux rolls his eyes, trying to dismiss a tickle of fondness at the back of his mind. “That’s not a compliment. Or accurate.”

Ren murmurs something definitely placating, lips gently searching and pressing teasingly at Hux’s throat. His breath is soft and too hot, big hands now curling at Hux’s back and down his hips like a pair of groping firebrands.

Hux feels his veins erupt into a furious boil in turn, and he reaches up to slide a hand into Ren’s thick hair when the sting of sharp, curved teeth cut into his skin; a slow gasp escapes his open mouth, eyes falling closed, as something settles in his chest that’s been anxious for decades. He has many regrets, but one of the most harmless may be never asking Snoke why his particular curse gave them blood that seemed to run like fire under their skin.

It’s all so unpredictably soothing, muscle relaxing from his shoulders to his calves, and he can’t help but wish he wasn’t such a cliché. He wants to stay angry, feel that seething under his skin, but all he can be right now is so, so grateful – he’s losing the energy to be bitter, when usually he'd be able to hold onto it for eternity. He wonders if it’s some ludicrous symptom of the tonic.

“I’ve felt,” Ren breathes a sigh into the hollow of Hux’s throat, his tongue wide and hot, lapping at the blood. “ _Amputated_.”

“As you say,” Hux says, lowering his voice when he can’t quite find it in him to be outright snide.

“Half of a man,” Ren continues, revealing he’s under some assumption that mawkishness will divert attention from decades of selfishness. It is only slightly effective, if growing more with how he’s keeping himself tucked forward, unbuttoning the top of Hux’s shirt for more skin, nipping sharply now across hiscollarbone. He then hums loud, sliding his lips back just under Hux’s ear, “Come home with me.”

Hux toys with the idea of refusing; pushing Ren away and telling him off, twenty years late, but on his own terms. The idea happens to be just as painful as it is attractive, which puts him in the difficult position of deciding to save it for another day, if he can get up to it. “Mine is far closer.”

Ren grunts low in some manner of agreement, then stiffens almost completely, aside for how he pulls back to look Hux in the eye. “You know where I live?”

Hux holds the look, taking a half-step away himself and inhaling sharp.

Ren regards him with a disturbing intensity, one of his hands falling away, then down to his own side. He seems shaken again, but perhaps that never went away. “…And you saw me in the shop.”

Hux glances backward at the sound of a car backfiring, if just to look away from Ren’s expression. “I’ve just said – ”

“I know!” Ren shouts, stumbling a further away and back into the truck, reaching up run both hands roughly through his hair. He exhales hard, visibly gritting his teeth, “I _know_. But I – I didn’t know you meant – ! _Fuck_.”

“Ren,” Hux says, frustrated that the pleasantness of just moments ago is proving to be little more than fleeting.

Ren shakes his head, ostensibly trying to steady himself. “Did you come up here just for me?”

Hux exhales slowly, toying with the idea of not answering until he catches Ren’s wretched eyes for barely an instant. “Not just,” he admits, his candor far less forced now; he watches the quiver across Ren’s lips and feels the impulse to lean in, cease it, but –

He finds himself unceremoniously yanked forward, shirt pulling tight around his ribs as Ren twists both hands into the fabric at the front. He has half an instant to think about pushing back before Ren is snatching a quick kiss, barely a beat of pressure and a tang of blood against Hux’s lips before he’s back to nosing against his jaw.

“You yearned for me,” Ren says, sounding virtually thrilled by the revelation, as if it were even a question. It wouldn’t be too much a reach that he liked to travel just to earn the sentiment.

“Bully,” Hux mutters, digging a set of nails into Ren’s bicep.

Ren tightens his grip in turn, giving some manner of growl and keeping Hux held firmly by the front as he leans them both back into the truck, opening his legs to grind up. He exhales shakily when its met halfway, “Bastard.”

Hux tilts his head and drags the sharp line of his fangs over Ren’s cheek, letting his tongue slip in behind to soothe the resulting line of plasma. “Where’s your _car_?”

Ren hums something under his breath, still rutting up on Hux’s thigh with that mounting lust. He lets go of Hux’s shirt with one hand and reaches back, slapping at the side of the truck with a pair of hollow bangs.

Hux feels disbelief erupt as a scoff, reaching up into the narrow space between them to push away from Ren. “This heap is yours?”

“Heap?!” Ren repeats, smacking the truck another time and dislodging a chunk of mud that proceeds to fall to the ground at their feet. He looks down at it, tense, then grunts low in his throat. “Just mud.”

Hux feels a laugh low in his throat, covering his mouth with the back of his knuckles.

“Shut up,” Ren says, shoving Hux further away with a grumble. He goes for the door with a yank, tilting his arm oddly until there’s a loud, obtrusive creak of resisting metal and it swings open wide.

Hux stares at the gaudy saddle-blanket seat cover inside, faded from years of sun and chalky with dust. He feels a grimace across his mouth, glancing back to Ren, only to find him already walking to the driver side of the truck.

“Could a human open this?” Hux asks, after it takes a short burst of preternatural strength to _close_ the damned door. His foot slips on something as he tries to settle in the seat, and looks down to find a well-thumbed Chilton manual. Wonderful.

Ren pulls himself into the driver seat with a shrug, reaching to turn a key that he’d apparently left in the ignition. “Who cares?”

“Downtown,” Hux says, reaching up and rubbing ineffectively between his brows. He’s not sure if this is worse or better than the last thing he’d… Actually. “Is this the same truck you had last time I saw you?”

“Obviously,” Ren says, backing out without looking and driving right into the street, careless of traffic or potholes. He settles to a jerking stop at a signal, tapping at the shifter. “Downtown… Like near the parks?”

“It’s …” Hux sighs, knowing that if he has to start giving directions, it’ll undeniably lead to a fight, which is something he’s already tired of for the night. “Let me drive.”

Ren is still for a few seconds, then takes his hands off the wheel, dissolving into smoke and shadow with little warning.

Hux rolls his eyes and manages to shift over in the same instant, though not quite so demonstrably, grimacing at the uncanny heat that shifts over his skin as they pass each other. He’s had well enough of witches for multiple lifetimes, yet a rather stubborn part of him is unwilling to completely let the most infuriating of them go.

He hesitantly lays a hand on the wheel, the other on the shifter, and puts it in first at the same moment he hears Ren’s seatbelt click. He looks over, but the silence is already falling thick enough that he can’t bring himself to break the tension. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, but he can feel a peculiar tingle across the surface of his skin, over his arms and up along his scalp.

“I wasn’t – ” Ren goes quiet again for a few moments, then clears his throat, “In Pittsburg.”

“Ren, don’t,” Hux mutters, having a hard enough time maneuvering this jalopy without Ren trying to explain all the ways he’s never, ever done anything wrong. 

“The hunters… snuck in. Badly,” Ren continues heedless, his voice falling low and tonal, fingers audibly picking at the surface of the torn cover. “Had a kid with them. A real little one. It woke me up.”

Hux knows that part of the story well enough, as some intrepid reporter had leaked images of the mutilated parents, torn to pieces. Their daughter had never been found, in any bits, which Hux amounts to shame; Ren hated being known for killing children, especially after Snoke died – he’d doubtlessly hide it. He may even have buried her, with the guilt of a lapsed Catholic whipping at him.

“They knew they couldn’t kill me, after that, not with what they had with them. But they taunted me – _bragged_ of what they were going to do to you instead, and I…” Ren trails off, his voice going so low as to need clearing his throat. Hux peeks over in reluctant concern to find him staring down at the dashboard, his clawed hand gripping at a leg. “I lost it. I didn’t even feed; it was just wrath.”

“Instinct,” Hux corrects, only to regret the hollow comfort at the moment it escapes his mouth; he’s so ill-equipped for consolation.

“I took the kid back,” Ren says, the assertion loud and harsh, almost prideful, as he reveals the real shock of the story. “She didn’t seem to understand what had happened, but she knew where she lived, and the… I told them they would stop hunting me because of it. And you – forgive you for the plague and fire.”

Hux scoffs under his breath, glancing sidelong as he stops at a light. “I rectified the Plague _by_ starting the fire.”

Ren blinks back with a turn at the corner of his mouth, some mix of disbelief and humor. “You destroyed London.”

“Not all of it,” Hux says, looking back to the road and accelerating into the fringes of his neighborhood, feeling conspicuous among the filled street parking and midnight walkers with their dogs. The throaty exhaust of Ren’s truck hardly helps, echoing down the street like a growling beast behind them. “And I stopped the plague.”

“However… you look at it,” Ren says slow, his contrary opinion made manifest in a low scoff and the bemused tone of his voice. “The deal was made. I had to disappear, and they’d leave us be for her lifetime.”

“I’m yet to see how this kept you from using the post,” Hux says, grudgingly slowing as a jogger crosses without bothering to look. Or _listen_.

“She’s started associating with our kind, though,” Ren continues, raising his voice further and determinedly continuing his own argument, while proceeding to ignore Hux’s – an entirely irritating and _common_ tactic. “Getting… friendly. Though I’ve gotten no promises she won’t kill me herself, for all she’s let the both of us live.”

Hux can hear a peculiar gravitas to that implication, though it takes a few moments for what he already knows to shift in place with it. “Are you implying that witch – ”

“I’m saying it,” Ren interrupts, already peering out the window with hunched shoulders when Hux looks over to glower at him.

“Good lord,” Hux mutters, turning as sharply as he’s able into his narrow drive, panicking slightly at the absence of his own Range Rover, until remembering it’s stuck at the office. He’ll have to get picked up, which is damned humiliating, unless Ren is going to drive him over, though that seems an even worse idea. “Why are you so much trouble?”

Ren’s answer is little more than something derisive under his breath, heaving open the passenger door with another ear-splitting creak. It’s a wonder it hasn’t just fallen off.

Hux feels almost as foolish jumping out of the truck as he had getting in, closing the door with a slam and grabbing his phone from a trouser pocket. He’s rather grateful the witch hadn’t added thievery to her other crimes, and reaches out to unlock the door with another thought to be relieved he installed the stupid magic lock. He still doesn’t trust it, but it makes him match the neighbors, which seems to matter among fools who like to accost him at the very moment he gets back from the office.

(Any other century, the particularly irritating twat just next door would have been a nourishing meal within a week.)

“This looks…” Ren trails off, taking a deep breath and reaching up to tap at a steel roof beam. “Eclectic.”

“A bit,” Hux says, rolling his eyes and putting his phone on the counter; the space next to it is conspicuously absent of the keys he would have if he bloody hadn’t been _kidnapped_ just hours ago. “I wasn’t aware you came along to critique my furniture.”

He will admit that his flat does look particularly odd with Ren standing in the sitting room. It’s simply… something he’s not used to – he hasn’t had anyone over, not from the office or his terrible neighbors, but it’s probably fitting that the first is Ren.

“Seems like someone should have,” Ren says, his attention turning to Hux, reaching out to tap his sternum with a pair of fingers. “Ugly.”

Hux grabs at the assaulting hand, tightening his jaw. “I will kick you out.”

Ren hums low, overtly taunting, and steps forward to pull himself in rather than his arm back. “No. You won’t.”

“I would for a bit,” Hux says, letting his eyes fall half closed, using his other hand to curl knuckles under Ren’s chin and prop him up. “Make you _beg_.”

“I thought you weren’t into it anymore,” Ren says, mouth twisting into an unpleasantly sullen pout.

“We were in public,” Hux says, sliding his grip from Ren’s jaw to around his nape, dropping the fingers warming his chest to reach down and tug at the loose pocket of Ren’s hoodie. “You dramatic fool.”

Ren continues to gaze back for a few moments, intense, then blinks away with a gruff clear of his throat. “Fuck you,” he says, moving closer and flattening his palm around Hux’s waist, practically muttering to the floor. “I can lament wherever I’d like.”

Hux is tempted to take advantage of the visibly tormenting decision Ren’s making of whether or not to fall to his knees, but instead of pushing him down, Hux shifts away from the embrace and steps in the direction of a more appropriate room. He doesn’t want to push his luck, still uncertain that Ren won’t turn tail and return to the Valley on a whim, not to mention he’d rather not get any more mud on his floor than strictly needed.

“So dark,” Ren says, shoving in close once Hux has led him to the bedroom, whispering directly into the back of his neck. “It’s almost like a vampire lives in here.”

Hux rolls his eyes, reaching out sideways for the switch that slowly exposes a glass balcony behind the black-out curtains. It’s a rather secluded deck, overlooking an unoccupied hill that descends onto the railroad tracks with the inlet on the other side. He rarely appreciates it, with how little he’s here, but a small, prideful part of him is always eager to boast. 

“Oh,” Ren intones, exhaling slow, his hands rising to press at Hux’s back, shuffling them both forward and closer to the balcony. “The tide’s out.”

Hux blinks and glances down when the groping hands quickly slip around to the front of his shirt, unsubtly pulling the hem from his trousers. “I have neighbors.”

“Not from here,” Ren says, nipping dully at Hux’s nape, leading into a low hum that vibrates down Hux’s spine. “Let’s fuck on the deck.”

“I’ll go as far as leaving the curtains open,” Hux compromises, reaching back and sliding a hand up along Ren’s hip, palming his side. He gives a low huff when it earns a pointed grind forward, the outline of a hardening cock unsubtle in Ren’s worn jeans.

He squeezes again, turning around, only to find Ren’s eyes intense, whatever emotion behind them also prompting an unsteady inhale. The reflex to ask gets silenced handily by Ren leaning in, lips catching his and pressing forward in a manner softer than before, their mouths barely opening except to share breath between them.

“Okay,” Ren murmurs, then takes another stuttering breath and moves away, though by only a fraction, his fists curled tight at the front of Hux’s open shirt. “Yeah.”

Hux reaches up along Ren’s cheek, using his thumb to swipe against a swollen lip. “The bed is right behind you.”

Ren takes a slow step back, then another, pulling Hux along, and slumps onto the mattress with a long hum. His hands drop from Hux’s shirt in the same moment, down to his trousers, feeling out his fly with similar gentleness to the kiss. It’s almost unbearably coy, especially when he leans in, softly mouthing at the impression of Hux’s cock, a low noise escaping him when Hux slides both hands through thick, glossy hair.

Hux thrusts forward slightly, exhaling a soft moan when Ren pulls at his zipper, losing some of that demureness to enthusiasm. His cock twitches slightly at the flood of cool air, but he finds himself more distracted by the next instant of a hot mouth engulfing him with little fanfare.

“Ren,” he gasps, tightening his hands, bending over slightly with misplaced breath. He sinks deep, slow into that wet heat, thrusting shallowly over Ren’s rolling tongue, then grudgingly pulls out, relieved to see Ren take the hint and let up. He's had too much happen today to draw this out all night, as much as the baser part of him invites it.

“I want you to fuck me,” Ren says, his voice low and hoarse, shoulders hunching slightly like this is some sort of secret. He leans in to press a heavy kiss just underneath Hux’s shaft, at the very same moment visibly driving the heel of a hand into his own lap. “But. It’s your turn to decide.”

Hux answers with a low hum, pretending to consider denying the request, but it’s more that a good section of his mind remains preoccupied by Ren’s usual cock-sucking mania. He moves away in the next moment, ignoring the trembling of his thighs, and loosens his hands to gently push Ren back by the shoulder. “Let’s take that filthy mouth from me, first.”

 _“Hux,”_ Ren complains, said reddened, wet mouth twisting with an exaggerated petulance.

“Just get your jeans off,” Hux says, trying to ignore the pleasant burning at the back of his neck; the spread of it down his chest, as it makes its way to wind tight around his spit-slicked cock. It’s like he’s finally realized what’s happening – after twenty years, he’s finally got Ren in his home again, and he’s genuinely unsure if he’ll be able to stand letting him leave after.

Hux slips his own clothing the rest of the way off and tugs not-so-helpfully at the hem of Ren’s hoodie, ducking some to dodge as it’s thrown at him, if disguising that with a reach down to a drawer for a couple of vital effects. The modern access to comfortable sex in _multiple_ flavors is something he’ll never tire of, if he’s completely honest, even if it has mostly been to the benefit of only himself up to now.

"That’s not KY?” Ren murmurs, stretching out with his hair spreading like ink across the pillow, looking over with a lewd swipe of his tongue between his lips.

“It certainly isn’t,” Hux agrees, tossing it at the foot of the bed as he pushes up, taking a better look at the envious figure now mussing his bed sheets. He must admit that living in the woods has done some good for Ren, his mass changing with the modern trend since the last time Hux took him to bed. He’d always been fit, but here he’s more defined, wider, the lines of muscle twitching in the most delightful pattern of movement.

“Lovely,” Hux murmurs, folding one knee underneath him and leaning over Ren, tasting the pulse beating under that thick neck. He spreads his hands across Ren’s impossibly wide chest, each pectoral larger than the span of his fingers, and shifts his mouth to whisper into a standout ear. “You are a beast, aren’t you?”

Ren turns his head to peer at Hux through his lashes, jaw shifting as he licks again across his lower lip.

“If only I had cable,” Hux continues, sliding his hands up around Ren’s shoulders, down his biceps, and groping indulgently across the dotted skin. “I would tie you down proper.”

“Keep me?” Ren murmurs, blinking with suddenly golden eyes, bright and disarmingly focused.

Hux suffers a compulsion to bury the truth, deflect it as he always had, but that won’t do; not anymore. “ _Forever,_ darling.”

Ren gives a breathy groan, arching up until his hard cock presses solidly into Hux’s hip.

“Mm,” Hux hums, reluctantly shifting away, taking his hand from Ren’s arm to reach out sideways and hook his fingers loosely around the lube threatening to roll off.

He moves to settle between Ren's thighs, absently dragging slicked fingertips up and down the length of Ren's flushed cock. The responsive jump of Ren's hips is practically pornographic, every part of him flexing and already beading with sweat, especially when he widens his legs at the moment Hux gently traces around his sack. "Aren't you eager?"

“Fuck,” Ren groans, his hole easing around Hux’s finger with suspiciously little resistance; undeniably stretched, though not particularly slick. 

“You’ve been worked open recently,” Hux says, suppressing a white-hot streak of possessiveness, forcefully channeling it into efficiency as he slicks up another finger. It’s hardly effective, as it is impossible not to think about all the ways some bastard has been setting their hands on his – his… what’s _his_ , damn it all. “Am I stealing you away from some fetishist into fucking moose?”

Ren stutters as he shakes his head, hips jerking forward and cock jumping. “No, ju – just. Alone. Couple hours ago – ‘s why…”

“Why _what_?” Hux demands, shoulders dropping with grudging relief. He pours a few measures more lube across his fingers, easing into a wider spread and making every movement sound lewd.  He settles his thumb up against Ren’s balls when the answer doesn’t come right away and presses, gratified to feel the prompt tightening around his knuckles.

“You,” Ren gasps, reaching down to grab at Hux’s hand about the wrist, his grip bruising, “Thought about you fucking me. Amsterdam.”

“Ah,” Hux intones, raising an eyebrow and tempted to correct him. _Ren_ hadn’t been the one who got fucked in any way outside the norm, not for them, presuming Hux is thinking of the correct circumstances.

“I just – you really liked that swing thing, right?” Ren says, rolling his eyes to the ceiling and revealing that he wasn’t remembering wrong – he was _fantasizing_ , which is somehow ten times more erotic. His fingers loosen on Hux's wrist, but don't retreat, as if under an impression he's guiding every thrust. “I still wish I could’ve tried it. This is good enough.”

“Could have,” Hux says, though it’s more conciliating than any true belief.

“Too big,” Ren says, exhaling a heaving breath and moving again, his hand now gripping at his own thigh and hips angling up as one leg starts to shake near Hux’s shoulder. “Always too big.”

“I like you big,” Hux says, sliding his other hand back up around Ren’s cock with pointed interest.

“Fuck you,” Ren mutters, awkwardly trying to buck up into both of Hux’s hands with a truly delightful whine at the back of his throat.

“Bit late to change your vote,” Hux says, leaning down on a whim and dragging his tongue across Ren’s slit, licking away that salty little drop of precome.

The whine recurs, only to become a groan, low and throaty.

Hux exhales his own shaky breath, feeling a rush of blood inside his ears, unbound lust seeming to catch up to him in an instant. He draws his fingers from Ren’s hole and reaches for the lube again, pouring it haphazardly, and entirely careless of the mess trickling down his hard cock to the duvet.

“Fuck,” Ren says, ass rolling upward in a tantalizing search for Hux’s cock, abdomen flexing and chest heaving for his effort; a glorious enough sight that it’s tempting just to let him have at it.

Hux gives an affected tut, exhaling a slow breath and taking pity on them both as he uses his thumb to press the head of his cock in, feeling his pulse jump and his teeth sting behind his gums for a heady, indescribable moment. He thrusts first shallow and slow, swallowing against a dry mouth and reaching out to grab at the bedspread, wary of clawing ribbons out of Ren. It isn’t that sort of fuck.

Ren flexes distractingly as he raises one hand above his head, clutching for an absent headboard. _“Fuck.”_

Hux hums in agreement, shifting for a better angle and moving quicker by measures, soon snapping his hips in time with the quick-steady thump of his veins, or Ren’s – it’s already becoming difficult to tell. He slides one hand up to clutch at Ren’s chest at the moment he feels in control enough, wrapping the other around a thigh and thrusting deeper, glancing down a few seconds just to watch Ren’s cock bounce and leak across his sweat-slicked stomach.

“Closer,” Ren gasps, reaching around Hux’s nape and yanking until they’re kissing with a gasping clatter of teeth.

Hux groans into Ren’s mouth, at the eager, oversize teeth biting sharp into his lip, urgency driving his hips ever forward. He is going to end up coming far too soon for his ego. He slips a hand slides up from Ren’s hip to join the other in finding purchase at that heaving chest, digging into the flesh there to leverage ripping his mouth away just at the moment he pushes back and out. His freed cock bobs dejectedly in front of him.

“Turn over,” Hux says, staring half-lidded down to Ren, tapping weakly at the thigh still curled over his side.  

Ren predictably grumbles at length, as if he’s not eager to swing a shaky leg over. He dips low as he settles, humping into the sheets and teasing with the wide spread of his thighs, exposing neatly his slick hole and heavy cock with little inhibition.

Hux drags his fingertips slow along the twitching muscle of Ren’s thick legs, his own cock jumping when Ren shamelessly leans into the sensation. He growls low in response, keeping one hand up the gorgeous arc of a spine, but drops the other to trace around the edges of Ren’s perfect ass, using a thumb to spread Ren’s hole wider and nudge forward with the head of his cock.

Ren gives a guttural gasp as Hux angles in, meeting that first thrust with a shuddering groan and quiver of muscle. He reaches backward to dig a set of sharp claws into Hux’s thigh, as a pleasant whimper breaks from his mouth. “Hux – _closer_.”

Hux rocks pointedly slow and deep, leaning down to plaster himself across the wide spread of Ren’s back, mouthing up the shifting muscle of a shoulder with emergent teeth. He moans low at a particularly agreeable squeeze around his cock, reaching up to grip into Ren’s hair and pull, exposing that delicious line of tendon to lean down for a slow, taunting lick. “Needy boy.”

“Fuck you,” Ren hisses, his hand loosening from Hux’s thigh to reach down and leverage himself up, rolling his hips with almost torturous purpose.

Hux finds himself driving harder in response, knowing the exact moment Ren takes hold of his cock by the seize and clench that stutters his own pace into desperate erraticism. He tightens his hold on Ren’s hair, dragging his fangs up that thick neck and taunting himself more than Ren; he can barely stand it – the need to rip and tear only intensifies as pressure builds, taut with a sweet sort of ache.

He bites down at the very moment orgasm begins to pulse through him; the rush of blood thick across his tongue, and his hips moving desperately with what feels like a decade’s release. He manages to reach down and clumsily lace fingers with Ren’s, both of them stroking his bobbing cock, slick with trickling lube and precome.

It seems to go on both forever and an instant; the pulling and thrusting and _biting_ , but soon Ren shouts and his body shakes, hole clenching almost painfully around Hux’s softening cock. The wounds close quick in his ensuing flood of adrenaline, precipitously stopping the flow of blood and prompting Hux to loosen his jaw before his fangs get fused to healing flesh. It is the sort of lesson that only needs to be demonstrated once, even if it had technically happened with his own flesh and Ren’s teeth.

“Hypocrite,” Ren groans, voice tight with his head still held at an awkward angle, ribs expanding with deep, panting breaths. He’s in shudders even as he slumps into the mattress, hands stretching out and knocking against the wall. “You’re the beast.”

Hux hums low into Ren’s neck, teeth receding fully into his gums as he laps idly at the remaining blood, warm and metallic. He pushes back before the instinct to _take, take **more**_ can overwhelm him, pulling out with a low grunt and slumping onto the bed next to Ren, smacking his lips and reluctantly savoring the taste of familiar. He’s never been as enthusiastic as Ren about drinking from each other, but he knows the craving; the feeling that settles low in his chest, deep and content, has always been hard to refuse.

He finds himself drifting off, because it’s late and he’s been kidnapped, and _fucked_ , so it’s easy to forget why he shouldn’t let his guard down until the very moment Ren rolls off the bed to stand naked in front of the balcony. The entire room seems to freeze in that moment, only growing colder when Ren starts to walk, his hand tracing needlessly across the glass until he reaches the en suite door.

The moment breaks with a snap when Ren flicks the light on, giving an oddly bemused hum, soon followed by something falling with a clang to the stone-tile floor. “Shit.”

“What was that?” Hux demands hoarsely, sitting up on his elbows and trying to slow the rapid beat of his damned preternatural heart. He should get up and follow, clean himself like a respectable monster, but he finds himself uneager yet to wash away the comforting scent of blood and sex.

Ren doesn’t answer for a few worrying moments, then clears his throat, the shower turning on and glass door sliding. “Nothing.”

Hux exhales a slow breath. “Benvolio, if you’re already breaking my – ”

“I’m not!” Ren snarls, slamming the toilet door shut with a crack that probably reaches the neighbors.

Hux stares at the door for a few moments, then lets his elbows out to collapse onto his back. He should go to sleep, at least, and save the caring until tomorrow when he can bury it in the controlled violence of bureaucracy.

He manages to settle himself into a half-way tolerable fugue within assumed minutes, his mind floating in-between thoughts and body heavy – a close cousin to sleep that seems to perform well-enough. It evaporates completely when a figure bears over him, though his instincts don’t flare, so Ren survives unscathed as he makes the unanticipated move of sliding right back into Hux’s bed.

Obviously, it’s not a _complete_ surprise, but Hux would have put money, ten minutes ago and amid dismal thoughts, on Ren simply taking his things and going home. It’s not as if he’s on shore leave, which is usually when he’d stay a day or two, or between outfits, when he’d stay weeks, though Hux should, perhaps, revise his expectations with the millennium and recent conversation, but it’s proving bloody difficult.

Ren mutters unintelligibly the entire time he settles, plastering his oversize self across Hux’s chest to evidently nose into his neck like a whelp. “Showers are better than I remember.”

Hux blinks at the ceiling, then glances over to Ren’s damp head, glumness quickly replaced by disbelief. “You’ve not got a shower?”

Ren gives a quiet grunt. “Sometimes it doesn’t rain enough. Tub is better.”

“Bloody hell,” Hux says, feeling a groan at the back of his throat, tempted to push Ren and his _old ways_ off the bed. He’d forgotten just how ill-adept Ren was at adjusting to contemporary trends, getting worse and worse as the decades wore on – it’s no wonder his vehicle is from 1973. “You utter hippie – is _that_ why you moved up here?”

“I’m not a hippie,” Ren says, predictably sullen at the accusation. “I _ate_ hippies. They’re gullible, drug-addled morons.”

Hux exhales a low huff, tugging pointedly on Ren’s long hair, though it’s only shoulder-length this century. “I’m surprised you’re not in Girdwood.”

Ren shakes his head in response, curling in closer until he’s biting softly at Hux’s collarbone with dull teeth, presumably as some coy warning to sleep. It’s essentially confirmed only a few quiet seconds later, when his body goes lax and turns to a warm cage, trapping Hux underneath in a position he hasn’t suffered in over two-and-a-half centuries of inexplicably cold behavior.

Or… not-so inexplicable; Hux _had_ once taken great comfort in making a show of hating all manner of affections, back while Snoke was alive. It had been more out of desperation for control than any true aversion, which he’d always believed Ren knew, almost to the point of resenting him for always ignoring the rebuffs, but… It seems neither of them were quite so omniscient. A likely consequence of being under a tyrant that had legitimately seemed to know everything; privacy simply wasn’t assumed.

The obvious occurs to him like a boltshot, just as he feels himself entering true sleep: Ren hadn’t _known_ _anything_ – he might even have believed he was being some twisted sort of careful, keeping his distance and taking what he could get without further rejection.

Same as Hux.

* * *

The morning arrives with more fanfare than deserved, with a panicked call from Dopheld, during which he apologizes senselessly and ceaselessly for a spell that had evidently made him an obedient thrall to the witch. He can be a superb minion, for a human, though he’s taken entirely too much to heart the idea that Hux is omnipotent, which is an opinion that Hux has yet to correct out of admitted pride. 

He finds himself glancing up with a sigh when he steps into the sitting room, only to come to a chagrined halt at the sight of Ren staring, conspicuously forlorn, at a framed sketch on the wall. It’s a relatively small piece, bearing creases from being folded over nearly two centuries ago, but Hux imagines it’s the subject that’s caught attention – shirtless and smirking, sitting on a crate with a net in his hands, is the man known as Kylo Sin Vida circa 1822.

It had slipped Hux’s mind that he had it, and the others, when bringing Ren home last night, but early morning is the best time for regret.

Or at least this torturous form of embarrassment.

“Where did you get all these?” Ren asks, turning from the sketch to settle his eyes on Hux, expression now off-puttingly opaque. He’s only ever this difficult to read when he doesn’t know what to feel himself.

“Auction,” Hux says, gesturing dismissively and trying to shrug off his own mounting anxiety. He’s never dreamed he would have to confront this, and it’s bordering on horrifying. “Someone terribly old had died, and I happened upon the estate.”

“They’re everywhere,” Ren says, glancing sideways toward the bedroom. He’s definitely seen the one at the door then, placed precisely so Hux can see it as he leaves the room. “Did you think I wouldn’t see them?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Hux says honestly, taking a long, careful breath and ignoring the painful tightening of the base of his throat. He’d bought the collection for far too much money, but hanging up each sketch had almost been a relief. “I got them because I didn’t think I’d ever have you in my home again otherwise.”

It wasn’t only that they were of Ren, really, but how every image featured him well-rested and at peace; it was a Ren that Hux never quite got the chance to know, for all he’d ached for it in lonely moments. He had even indulgently placed one sketch outside the _shower,_ which he’s realizing now must be what dropped last night. It’s a coy thing: Ren with his back to the sea, but his eyes half closed in the direction of it like he couldn’t really look away.

Hux doesn’t like thinking about the artist, or how close they were to Ren and that they got to have him for an entire voyage across the sea, while Hux got little more than a pair of days at a time. He kept the musing on that for when he got maudlin and drunk. He likes to believe sober that Ren ate them.

“Apologies if they remind you of someone,” he says, reaching for a mug of evident blood on the counter. “I can take them down.”

He won’t.

The blood is a bit cold, but Hux gags it down anyway, then turns around to the sink to wash the dregs away as some attempt to seem dismissive and busy. He looks up from rinsing his mug only to find Ren now trembling, his expression haunted as telltale red streaks slowly creep down his cheeks from glowing, desolate eyes.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Hux says, keeping his voice low and shifting forward on little more than instinct; one hand going around Ren’s nape as he brings his mouth up to gently lap at wasteful tears. The blood is salty on his tongue.

“I just didn’t want them to hurt you,” Ren croaks, curling into Hux with a half-choked sob. His hands come up to cover his face and fingers grow claws that dig welts into his skin. “I never thought you’d miss me. I thought you would be relieved.”

“I was devastated,” Hux counters, speaking soft as he leans in closer Ren’s ear, curling his fingers around his nape and indulging a desire to be both cruel and honest. “ _Despairing_. I had lost my lover.”

“You must take it back,” Ren says, his voice slipping with emotion, words slurring together in a forgotten accent. He peeks up through parted knuckles, eyes stained red. “You cannot forgive me.”

Hux exhales after a tense moment, pulling Ren closer to speak straight into his ear. “I want to.”

“Armitage,” Ren hiccoughs, and the way he says it is like he used to, syllables stressed in all the wrong places, as he collapses forward to press his face harder into Hux’s neck. “You can’t.”

“I will,” Hux says, dropping his voice further, inarguable, “I refuse to tolerate empty illustrations when I can have you in flesh and bone.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Perhaps not,” Hux agrees, feeling only a little mean for it, as he slides his fingers through the soft hairs at the back of Ren’s neck. “But I do.”

* * *

“The Red Devil and Black Death,” Hux reads, tilting his head with a short tut and reaching out to trace the etched title with a pair of fingers. “Hardly subtle, but passable.”

The witch startles out of her skin, as does her companion, the pair of them gripping at the counter now to their back.

“How did you get this close?” Rey snaps, stepping forward on one foot into a conspicuous stance, her eyes darting to her entry with some manner of betrayal. “I redid the wards; twice over.”

“Perhaps I am not ill-intended,” Hux says, stepping away from the manuscript and further into the kitchen. “Though not harmless to the degree of Mr Finnemore.”

Finn narrows his stunned gaze to a focused glare, jaw going square and tense. “I’m not like you _at all_.”

“Not quite old enough,” Hux says, shrugging shortly and ignoring a reflex to lean back as pleasant heat brushes up his spine. He takes another step, carefully ignoring a familiar shadow cutting across the floor. “You children turned after the Great War never had the chance to be.”

“What do you want?”

Ren finally reveals himself from a dark corner, taking sparsely a moment to coalesce into his solid, ever increasingly dramatic form. “Change the story.”

“Shit,” Finn yelps, scrambling against the counter; it’s comforting somehow to see he hadn’t known Ren, or at least not particularly well. “Holy fuck.”

“Which part?” Rey asks, her voice steady despite the visible trembling of her tightening fist. Her eyes dart between Hux and Ren, intent with some readiness to defend herself if it comes to it.

“Are you too stupid to tell?” Ren snaps, shifting again into a whorl of petulant shadow. His mouth caresses Hux’s ear like warm steam, just as he settles on the other side, “The morons.”

Hux gives an indulgent, toothy sneer when Rey turns her narrowed gaze back to him, her eyes brimming with that familiar demand for explanation. He lifts his hand with a short hum, glancing sidelong as he draws his knuckles down the crooked line of Ren’s jaw. “The end, obviously.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I started this last July, but I got serious about it this Jan, which is why I mentioned sun so much - I missed it. My secondary goal with this fic was to make it seem really normal that vampires are just everywhere up here, bc like, let me dream. [OH, and an idea of what ANC looks like at midnight in June .](https://i2.wp.com/www.runsandplaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20140620_003257.jpg%20) Night is sort of like a really long dusk, and people stay up forever doing random shit in the parks.


End file.
